Yves Saint Laurent: A Tribute
By Rebecca Kingsbury
The fashion world mourned the passing of one of modern fashion’s leading designers on the 1st June. Yves Saint Laurent died aged 71, and leaves a long legacy of influential collections behind him.
Fashion seemed to be in his blood; as a young boy growing up in Algeria he would make mini collections out of his mother’s old clothes and give fashion tips to the women in his family. It’s no wonder that by his late teens, he was working as an apprentice for Christian Dior. He soon got promoted to assistant and upon Dior’s death in 1957, his responsibilities grew even more. He was named as Dior’s successor along with three others, and his first collection in 1958, which included the trapeze look as silhouette, made the world sit up and look. Soon after he met his life-long partner Pierre Berge, and together they set up the Yves Saint Laurent brand.
Business was slow at first – the critics didn’t love it, but sales starting to rise, which gave the brand a boost. Throughout the 1960s, he made collections and garments that have re-emerged in fashion this year – the safari and nautical trends of this summer were just some of Saint Laurent’s creations, proving just how influential he was to the fashion industry. In 1967, motivated by his personal and business partner Pierre, he created a real fashion revolution – ready to wear. You would be hard pushed to find a designer brand today that does not have a ready to wear collection.
Along with his wearable work, Saint Laurent made haute couture what it is today. Spending huge amounts of money on his shows, he transformed his fashion runway into a stage show displaying his grand collections that were more like pieces of artwork than garments. In fact, some of his collections from the 1980s included Van Gogh paintings, and his work appeared in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Despite his weird and wacky collections, or even for the vision to create something so daring, Saint Laurent collected various honours including the New York Fashion Council Lifetime Achievement Award. He retired in 2002, passing his brand into the hands of other luxury goods groups, having felt that he had “created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman”.
|
 |
|
